Pages

Thursday, January 16, 2014

He Appeared to be a Lunatic

A nest for hibernating bears. Courtesy Tim Laske

Often I dream about being able to breathe underwater. It
always comes to me as a kind of revelation, as if it’s actually really simple,
and our whole inability to breathe underwater as humans has been a matter of just not doing it
right. The trick is to just sip the air out of the water through pursed lips. That’s all.

Anyway, this breathing vision is common, for me, along with the
dreams about clean, surfing-worthy waves breaking on the street outside my
house, or an office building, but a new one has popped up recently as well. In this new scenario, besides the breathing, I can
also see very clearly underwater, as if I’m wearing goggles, and all I have to
do is just open my eyelids very slightly at first, to form a kind of air
bubble, and then gradually open them wider so that this bubble spreads, forming
a kind of natural lens of air over my eyes.

The dream is so vivid that I’ve tried it a few times in the
pool. And no, it does not work. But I’ll probably keep trying.

Last week, I was deep into a conversation about computer
simulations with a very smart German scientist when he unexpectedly paused. “Greg!” he said after a moment.

“Yes?” I replied. I was worried he’d caught me zoning out.

“Don’t worry, Greg!
This is very difficult! Even many
of my colleagues have trouble understanding this research!”

I thanked him; apparently he sensed my confusion, and I was
very grateful. Scientists aren’t always
that patient or understanding when explaining the intricacies of their
work. He does some fascinating research,
too, so I’m glad he took the time to explain it, and I’ll point to the story in
a future post, after it has been published. In the past few weeks I also spoke
with a few toxicologists, a sports scientist in Norway, an odd pair of
inventive gentleman who conspired to build a very unusual car, and a
brilliantly offbeat artist who designs crazy Rube Goldberg machines. I can’t
really discuss all the stories until they’re published, but here are a few
other recent ones:

Also, here’s an
older one that I never linked to, and should have, since it does kind of
pull together two of my passions, science and basketball. These scientists at
Georgia Tech built a jumping robot and discovered that it’s more efficient for
a robot to perform a short hop before a big jump. One of the engineers then
noticed a video of the basketball star Kobe Bryant doing the same thing in a
famous commercial. I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to reference the NBA
in a science magazine before. So I was pretty excited.

This
is even older, from earlier last year, but it was just so cool. The story
is all about hibernation, but I was particularly excited about the bears.
Apparently, they hibernate in giant nests. Yes, nests.

Imagine walking through the woods in the winter and
stumbling across a massive pile of fur surrounded by a huge pile of brush and sticks? I’d
probably start worrying that I’d stepped into an alternate universe and that
some giant predatory bird was going to blame me for knocking its nest over and then come and pick me up and take me away. Of
course, there’s always the chance that this bird would turn out to be friendly,
and offer to give me rides to different places in exchanges for jokes or funny
poems or beef jerky, in which case I would always try to keep one or a few of
each on me at all times, so that if I was ever stuck, or just wanted to go
somewhere nicer, or warmer, I could call my giant bird friends and get a ride.

Sorry...I thought I was writing about
science. Now I’ve wandered into fiction again. So, while we’re here, or there,
I’ve got a few great quotes from recent readings:

“I gave him my best study, the judge. Then and now. He
appeared to be a lunatic and then not.”

This is from Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. And this
judge character is absolutely terrifying, by the way. He has to be the devil. I dog-eared most of the pages, consistently startled by the style of writing, but
here’s another devilish reference that kind of scared me:

“For the earth is a globe in the void and truth there’s no
up nor down to it and there’s men in this company besides myself seen little
cloven hoofprints in the stone clever as a little doe in her going but what
little doe ever trod melted rock?”

I’m unsettled again just copying that out, so here’s
something a little different, from the first man to sail around the world alone:

“I had taken little advice from any one, for I had a right
to my own opinions in matters pertaining to the sea. – Joshua Slocum

And from Charles Darwin’s autobiography:

“Once as a very little boy, whilst at the day-school, or
before that time, I acted cruelly, for I beat a puppy I believe, simply from
enjoying the sense of power; but the beating could not have been severe, for
the puppy did not howl, of which I feel sure as the spot was near to the house.
This act lay heavily on my conscience, as is shown by my remembering the exact
spot where the crime was committed. It probably lay all the heavier from my
love of dogs being then, and for a long time afterwards, a passion. Dogs seemed
to know this, for I was an adept in robbing their love from their masters.”

Yes, that's right. Young Darwin kicked a puppy. I suppose I'll leave you with that.